Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – Eleven days before the election, President Donald Trump held a last-minute campaign event in one of Florida’s most trusted red areas, whose voters have become a question mark hanging over his campaign – it could help one. To bid or break his re-election.
House, home to a sprawling retirement community in one of the country’s whitest and oldest populations, has consistently backed Republican candidates over the years, breaking nearly a percentage point percentage for Trump in 2011.
But the president’s decision to campaign here came amid his struggle to capture the elderly white voters he addressed at a stop this Friday, who are upset by his rhetoric and his response to the coronavirus epidemic.
“Under [Joe] Biden’s plan, you’ll be off for years, “Trump told the crowd, many of them muscular and crowded together, before hearing the vague endorsement of social distance, about the Democratic nominee’s proposal to address the epidemic.” Some people want. To live, and that’s good. Please. I am a kind, live your life. “
In this year’s poll, there has been an increase in the number of seniors leaving Trump because of that brand of aging epidemic messaging. According to the October-October NBC News / Wall Street Journal Journal, the trend accelerated: mor૨ percent of Trump’s registered senior voters supported Biden and only 35 percent supported the president.
Trump won the senior vote by 7 points in 2001, so a slight drop in support for older white voters, the foundation of his base, could have a huge impact on his re-election results.
The presidential team, well versed in the math of the election, has spent the past few months making increasingly aggressive efforts to get rid of them through White House programs and announcements, television commercials, bottom-up events, social media and other placards. .
But voting losses have increased. And in recent conversations with older white voters in Florida and Pennsylvania, voter-rich swing states with the highest percentage of the country’s senior residents say some people stopped selling hard, expressing a sense of emptiness in the presidential election. Missing day.
Jane Cater, 81, of the Fort Lauderdale area, said she was “disappointed” by Trump’s response to the Covid-19 epidemic. But he is not the only source of discomfort with the president.
“This is also the way to talk,” Ketter told NBC News as he considered voting for Biden, the 2020 democratic presidential candidate. “You know, I want an end to this.”
Larry, who retired from Miami, told NBC News that his last name should not be published and that he has always supported Republicans. Although Trump’s behavior bothered him in 2016, his support for the future president’s tax policy has allayed those concerns. Not this year.
“I can’t do that this time,” he said. “I’m just sick of it all —.”
“And my grandchildren said they wouldn’t talk to me if I voted for him again,” he joked.
More than 1,000 miles in western Pennsylvania, Bill Shea, 80, told NBC News that he also voted for Trump in 2016, although he said it was “never a clear choice” at the time. Now, he feels uncertain about how he will vote this fall.
Shaw, who said he was not a fan of the initial debate and added all the “screams” that took place, said he still wanted to hear more about the candidates’ agenda.
“I’m worried,” said Shea, a Pittsburgh suburb of Mayt. Lebanon. “It’s been very hard. I probably won’t [decide] Until I go to the polls. “
“He hasn’t hit me yet,” he said of how he plans to vote.
Trump won both Florida and Pennsylvania by about 1 percentage point in 2016. While he will be able to win the Elect Oral Real College Ledge without Pennsylvania, his path to victory is more uncertain if he loses to Florida.
In these important states, the group’s poll results have not been as promising for them nationally. In Florida, where exit polls showed Trump winning 1 point in the senior year 2011-17, Biden raised points with older voters in the state’s CNN / SSRS poll released Wednesday. In Pennsylvania, where exit polls showed Trump winning senior seniors in 2016, Biden was now 22 points above the demographic in the CNN / SSRS poll published on Wednesday.
While the coronavirus has a role to play in Trump’s declining support among seniors, there were indications that his enthusiasm for him was flagging off long before the epidemic hit. In the 2018 midterm elections, the Republican candidates in Congress won voters aged 65 and over by 2 points, a significant drop from Trump’s 2016 total.
The president has made repeated attempts to keep these voters in his camp, making his efforts significant in the final few weeks of the race.
He posted a video on Twitter in early October claiming that the seniors were his “favorite people in the world.” He announced plans to give seniors a one-time કાર્ડ 200 discount card to buy prescription drugs, forcing the benefits to become a reality before election day (despite immediate criticism the plan may be illegal.)
And last week, the Trump campaign last week announced new TV commercials targeting seniors, launching a nationwide series of “Prime Timers for Trump” aimed at older voters.
Yet the president’s own actions complicate those efforts at times. Hours after his team unveiled new senior-focused ads, for example, He shared an Instagram meme Who ridiculously showed Biden’s face supermaps on a picture of a man sitting in a wheelchair inside a nursing home, with the crossout out “p.” The slogan was “Biden for the President”.
Trump has made age-based attacks on Biden for more than a year, repeatedly mocking his Democratic rival in campaign speeches and portraying him as spoiled and declining.
“That’s something I’ve noticed,” said Florida’s 1970s veteran GN, born Nabo, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and planned to re-vote for Democrats, citing Trump’s comments about Baden’s age and health. “I find it offensive and I think a lot of my friends look at it and think ‘why vote this?’
Biden has captured Trump’s rhetoric and readiness to reduce the coronavirus, noting that seniors are at increased risk of death should they infect the virus, as the president did last month.
“For Donald Trump, it’s not easy, it’s not a joke, you can afford it. You forgot You are virtually no one. He looks at those seniors. “That’s how he sees you,” Byden said during the Senior Focus October campaign in South Florida.
Trump has repeatedly called the campaign a Democratic focus on the virus, as it is a political stunt to intimidate people into supporting Biden.
“It is a frightening and blatant lie that Biden will not continue to shake his head in an attempt to raise cheap political issues, as President Trump and his administration will prioritize and continue to care for our country’s senior citizens,” spokeswoman Courtney Perella said. The Trump campaign, said in a statement.
NBC’s request for comment on the bidon campaign has not been answered.
Some older voters still see other factors that carry Trump’s signing numbers with seniors – besides, unlike in 2016, he’s not running against Hillary Clinton, whose disqualification numbers were comparable to Trump’s.
On, Ron Demscher of the Year told NBC News that he voted for Clinton in 2016 and is supporting Biden this time. But, he said, his “democratically-minded friends” voted for Trump in 2016 “to get rid of Hillary.”
“But now they’re going back to Biden,” said Demsher, a resident of Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. “They’re going to vote for the Democrats this time.”
When asked if he knew anyone who voted for Trump who did not return to the presidency in 2016, Demscher said: “To tell you the truth, I don’t know anyone.”
This observation highlights another issue for the president: his struggle to attract theoretically winning voters who were not at his camp in 2016.
“Before I vote for Donald Trump, any man who has ever lived or died on Planet Earth will vote for him,” Josh Sweetz, a J5 year old resident of Whitehall, Pennsylvania, told NBC News.
Voting Clinton in 2016 and supporting Biden in 2020, Schwitz said he was “cautiously optimistic” about his candidate’s chances.
“I emphasize the word ‘caution,'” he said. “I’ve seen this movie before. This pre-election poll and optimism and what you have.”
Lure Ren Egan Alan Smith from Florida, Pennsylvania, reports
